A Saudi Arabian organization is apologizing after posting an image on Twitter appearing to show an Air Canada plane heading toward the CN Tower in a way that is reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. ... The Infographic KSA account is verified by Twitter and has over 350,000 followers, with another 88,000 on Instagram. It has a history of posting messages that are supportive of the Saudi government.

What could be more emblematic of the spendthrift incompetence of the new Saudi Arabian regime than threatening to crash a jetliner into a radio mast? Read the rest

Kincannon reportedly told Simpsonville police officers that he killed the dog because, "I'm the second coming of Christ and I got a command from God to do it." ... Kincannon said "that every 1,000 years there needs to be a sacrifice and blood must be spilt."

An incident report noted that Kincannon held up injuries to his arm and wrist - which an officer said were likely from a dog bite - and said, "I have a sign. I'm about to get crucified in the media."

This happened in September of last year, but I just saw it this morning. What a wonderful GIF!

This gigantic asshole is reported to have been instigating fights.

People should be afraid to wear symbols that openly identify themselves as supporting genocide.

Red hats and Confederate flags are a gateway drug to German National Socialist armbands. Why do these morons all want America to be its greatest enemies? The Confederacy, Nazi Germany and Russia.

The GIF came from humanpersonface, a Tumblr that covers the entire timeline of events with tweeted and socially shared images. Seattle Times published the following:

Seattle police are responding Monday to a viral video of a man wearing a swastika armband getting punched in downtown Seattle.

Police said they they received several reports Sunday of a man wearing a swastika instigating fights at Third Avenue and Pine Street. Police said they were on the scene within five minutes and found the man — with a Nazi flag armband — on the ground.

“He declined to provide info about incident & left after removing his armband,” Seattle police said in a tweet about the incident on Monday.

No one else at the scene contacted officers to make a report about the incident, police said.

This handy wallwart lets me charge my phone and watch while I sleep, without a lot of extra chargers hanging around.

After living in the same house for 10 years I am pretty sure I know where I want things. Moving USB chargers around gets tiresome, and the sheer convenience of just having a few USB ports on the wall behind my bed became too much to resist.

I have also never had electronics damaged by a "surge." I am glad that so many of my home electronics are protected, as The Protectors have clearly done their job. HERE IS TO YOU SURGE PROTECTORS!

I put this wallwart behind my bed, things are easier. It fits in a top outlet, leaving the bottom usable.

Facebook wants to "deepen user engagement" with Messenger, and to that end, it's been pitching America's giant banks on joint enterprises where Facebook will get to see all your financial info (especially info on where you're shopping and what you're buying) to help it suck you into using Messenger for longer.
Read the rest

Dance battles have come a long way from a bunch of kids breaking on a piece of cardboard. Watch as The Lab shows how it's done these days, replete with gymnastics, tight choreography, and the slick production values of a major network show. Read the rest

Consumer Reports is arguably America's most trusted source of product reviews -- published by Consumers Union, a venerable nonprofit with a deserved reputation for scrupulous care and neutrality -- and for years it has been wrestling with how to address privacy and cybersecurity in modern products (disclosure: I have advised them some on this).
Read the rest

The Alternative For Germany (AfD) is a xenophobic far-right party whose ranks include neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers; in a new tell-all book by "AfD dropout" Franziska Schreiber (once the head of the AfD's youth wing), we learn that party leader Frauke Petry worked closely with Hans-Georg Maaßen, the president of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (a domestic surveillance agency with 3,100 employees and an annual budget of €350m).
Read the rest

The Basic Engine is a tiny but intentionally limited computer platform designed to be like a late-1980s game console or home computer, but with some useful modern benefits. In effect, it's like Pico-8, but hardware instead of a set of abstract and arbitrary design limitations on software.

The BASIC Engine is a very low-cost single-board home computer with advanced 2D color graphics and sound capabilities, roughly comparable to late-1980s or early-1990s computers and video game consoles. It can be built at home without special skills or tools and using readily available components for under 10 Euros in parts, or mass-produced for even less.

Graphics and sound
· 256-color text and graphics at resolutions from 160x200 up to 460x224 (PAL: 508x240) pixels
· Software sprites (up to 32 sprites sized up to 32x32 pixels).
· Scrollable tiled background graphics engine with up to four layers.
· Wavetable synthesizer and PLAY command that renders music in MML format.
· Loading and saving of PCX image files to and from video memory.
· Various text fonts built-in, including an ATI 6x8 font (for up to 76 (PAL: 84) characters per line) and PETSCII.
· Direct manipulation of video memory and controller registers possible, permitting higher-color screen modes, custom resolutions and other video effects.

"Why not just use a Rasberry Pi?" is a common question but the answer should be obvious: it's about a nostalgic idea of the perfect thing that never existed, a technological hiraeth, forbidden to exceed the place and time the yearning was born. Read the rest